Grass has repeatedly expressed his scepticism about the use of symbols, associating this mode with Nazi propaganda and with ideological thought in general…. (p. 69)

For Grass, the symbolic mode is tied to the German idealistic tradition. As a result, he constantly devalues fixed symbolic patterns in his works and discovers symbolic equivalents for ideas, traditions, or historical conditions that exhibit simultaneously their relevance and their absurd arbitrariness. Grass both uses and parodies his use of this mode. He makes connections playfully and too profusely, as with the dog in Hundejahre; he makes clear the grotesque discrepancy between symbolic equivalents and the occasions of brute reality, thus emphasizing the inadequacy of the whole symbolizing process. In Hundejahre, the scarecrows, which have so often been identified with the Nazis, are revealed as insubstantial and insufficient to express the reality they represent; in the scene in which Amsel is beaten by...